Gremlin's Tall Stories

Alarm at 7am, Murray is up quickly again, he likes getting on the road early, seeing lots of things and generally taking his time. The earlier he starts, the more time he has. I’m rather the opposite, leaving later, stopping less, just doing what I want to do and rocking through the mileage.

No breakfast provided this morning, but I use the morning to check emails and blog, also reading Mark and Gerry’s. Thank goodness I used the deadlock to lock the door when Murray left, I’m in the toilet and the cleaner is knocking, I’m replying at they’re still trying to get through the door. Saw later they were listening to music. Protip: If you want to hear if customers are still in the room, best you take out your ear buds?

Packed and left later than planned, around 10.30am. On the way out of town I filled up, plenty of traffic, so simply sat in line, trundling along. Entering the Teton National Park I think I’ve got the toll booth sorted, with my pass in my pocket. Wielding it, I’m asked for my license. Sigh… no, just had the pass, the license is in my top box. She trusts me, but advises me to have it for the next entrance. Passing by the Tetons I stopped at the nice board to take pictures. A couple were trying to photograph themselves, so took a picture for them.

Just up the road I had my closest moment at being taken out yet, in fact, one of my closest ever. The traffic slowed right down, had no idea why, but I’m crawling at 5-7mph. I look in my mirror to see an SUV closing far too fast. I’m looking at him in disbelief as the nose dips sharply and he veers right. Seeing this, I accelerate and move left, towards the centre line.

Fortunately, he pulled it up in time, but it didn’t feel good watching him brake that hard and feeling like a sitting duck. I finally find out the reason we’re going so slowly is because tourists are stopping on the road to photograph a damn moose, but don’t pull over. I pull over to photograph it, just as it disappears into a gully, so fuck you then, and pull out again. I believe I’ll see plenty more anyway.

The road was quite flat, but mountains on both sides. I even experimented with taking shots while on the move. Quite difficult to do, right hand on throttle, left on camera, don’t block the lense, ooh, focus on the road… Naughty me, but did it OK.

Every National Park you enter has an entrance fee, and going round one corner the traffic is backed up, everyone stopped. No idea why, presume an animal. An eternity of crawling (in human time, about 10-20min) and finally I have an answer. It’s a toll booth for the park, and pass or not you line up in two queues. I pulled over to get my license (I’m getting better at this) and took a photo of me entering a park. Weeeee.

I’d been told by others that Yellowstone wasn’t the best of the bunch, but it was the first, and possibly the largest. Initially it was definitely ho-hum, but quickly had some awesome scenery, the most annoying part was I couldn’t stop for some as there was no space.

The recommended route was bypassing Old Faithful, but if you wanted to do it, you could head out and back. I decided I’d prefer to see more of the park, so would head to Old Faithful and then loop around in a clockwise direction.

Unfortunately, USA Parks have something we don’t have too much of. Traffic. A speed limit of 45mph, which while still pretty slow, most of the cars were doing 35mph, sometimes even less. Drove me mental, and it was more of the same to Old Faithful. On the only plus side, I was getting unheard of fuel economy, in the mid 4L / 100km. Just as I entered the road to Old Faithful it starts belting down again, the odd bit of hail which I felt through my thick gloves, the rest just very heavy rain.

Old Faithful was surprising, but not in the way I expected. We have geysers at home, and this was another thermal park. I didn’t expect the size of the car park, the huge buildings, even accommodation right nearby. I finally parked the bike, sharing the park with another GSA that looked reasonably kitted out. Got off the bike, first thing I thought was, “Where the hell is the geyser? I can’t even see it for all the traffic trying to leave or find parks!”. They operate a 2 lane each way, one way system, there is even an interchange in the middle of nowhere just to handle the traffic volumes flowing through the site.

I was actually put off the whole park with all the crowds, so took some pictures and found the grocery store, bought a couple of sandwiches, orange juice and cheesecake. I was about to return to the bike to eat and head off when the heavens opened again, dumping some more rain. I’ve been rained on several days in a row, so getting more used to my “summer” holiday.

I’d seen the GSA move to the gas pumps (yep, inside these national parks they have stores, toilets, gas stations, pretty much mini towns inside the park), so walked over and enquired that I evidently hadn’t parked him in. He grinned and said no, declared himself an Aussie. About to call him a sheep shagger, I decided to continue inter-country relations and we spoke about bikes, how great the GSA was (it’s after all the greatest bike in the world init?) and he said he’d run out of cards, but to check out circle to circle – a bit of googling and I finally found them - http://bergaliaboys.com/joomla/).

I had to admit I wasn’t doing anything as crazy as riding from the Arctic to Antarctic Circle, but I did have 15 Harleys in tow. He did offer his commiserations.

Time was marching on, already after 2pm, so back on the bike and around the park at snail’s pace. Stopped a few times for photos and at Norris Canyon I actually had to get off to the bike and walk to the view. Did it in full gear, flipping up the front of the helmet. Got a few curious looks, and the heat got to me as I got back to the bike, but at least it sped things up and I cooled down once on the bike again.

Traffic was quieter, but not for that long. The scenery was stunning again, the lakes and rivers picture perfect. Coming across a herd of bison right at the roadside caused traffic to stop. I was very tempted to slap the oncoming driver around a bit as he remained stopped… but thought not the done thing when you’re a tourist. Still highly tempted though. The warnings to STAY IN YOUR CAR coupled with cars stopped, I have to stop, and the bison is right next to me didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, but the bison seemed more content to eat the grass (much to my relief).

Further down the road the traffic has a reason to stop. One large bison very casually walks across the road in front of a camper, bringing all traffic to a halt. While the photo would have been fantastic, I was glad I wasn’t at the front. They’re clearly used to cars, as there was no rushed motion, just a casual walk across the road. Another was rolling in the sand just a metre or two from the road side.

Re-joining the prescribed route, time is marching on, now I’m only going to be arriving around 6pm, so I better get a move on. Yellowstone Lake is beautiful and I continue to stop, also finding a road to head up to get more of an overlook. The past fires are evident, trees devoid of any greenery, just stalks in the ground. I had to avoid what I thought were beavers on the short road, others are convinced they were something else. Either way, they were on the road enough to make me have to avoid them and pile on the brakes and then long gone before I’d even pulled the camera out.

Leaving the lake behind I climbed Sylvan Pass. It was around 4.30pm and I’d had enough of the 35 and 45mph limits. 65-70mph made the road much more enjoyable and there was very little traffic. The pass was fantastic, again experimenting with photographing on the move. Some were abject failures, others turned out very well. The bad ones have been deleted.

A brief stop at the Buffalo Bill Dam, I didn’t know it had a whole museum and stuff, just took some photos and moved on. Stopping on the other side, I went to take some pictures, first one was fine, powered off then on again to take some more and the camera is vibrating like crazy. LCD screen shows only a blur and once you take a shot, it’s blurred as well. Oh happy joy, it looks like the camera is fucked. It’s under warranty, but on the other side of the world, so not much good here. On the way to Cody I search the GPS in vain for a camera store, but nothing within 100 miles.

I’m thinking awesome, half way through the trip and no camera. Arriving at the Cody Motor Lodge, Ken is desperate to use the laptop to check some banking details, so I unpack that stuff then head over to a Walgreens, but only find some basic ones and photo processing. They recommended Radioshack so I’ll speak to them tomorrow and see what they say. Googling on the laptop produces no results and it appears it’s hardly happened, let alone a self-fix for it. One of my previous cameras had a known fault and if careful, you could open it up and fix it yourself, which I did.

Back at the Lodge, some are going to the Irma Hotel (no pictures of course, camera was giving me the digital finger) so I tagged along. We jump in the van and I ask Jan to hand over the lolly bag they received from the Jackson accommodation (as way of thanks for the group booking). Jan said they couldn’t eat them all, so help yourself. Found a nice chocolate one and opened it.

What a mistake.

Forgetting how hot it was (mid-twenties at least) there was only chocolate liquid in the place of something somewhat solid, and out it poured, over my hands, over my shorts (khaki shorts, not brown or black of course) and generally making a huge mess. Awesome.

Cleaned my hands in the Irma bathrooms, but trying to put water on the chocolate only made it look more dubious, so tried to hide it for most of the stop (looked incredibly dodgy of course). Had a sprite… sorry, sprite flavoured ice in a cup, then grabbed a coke cherry bottle for $1 from a vending machine. A much better option and probably better priced. Chatted amongst ourselves and also to a couple of Swedish guys, also on a riding holiday here.

Grannies just down the road (a mere couple of hundred metres) was the plan for dinner, so on the way I swapped shorts, stuck the others in for a soak. Dinner was chicken fried steak, except it wasn’t steak and was probably more chicken. USA thing apparently. Looked a lot like chicken schnitzel, didn’t taste too bad and was well priced.

Ken plans to leave at 7am for Beartooth tomorrow morning, I’m not having a bar of that, so will leave later. Mark and Gerry want to do it and got in late, so have no desire to start at 7am and we’ve agreed 8.45am would suit us better.

Spent some time looking into the camera issue, no success, and no blogging either, headed for bed after being beaten up by a pretty powerful shower head that left you somewhat panting afterwards.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZqmbVahQnKrTAECS6